Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

The trades soon became light and baffling. Heavy rain-squalls, with thunder and lightning, were frequent; and three days after, as one of these cleared away, the high mountain near Java Head appeared full a quarter of a degree above the horizon, its black shoulders rising out of a beautiful mantle of the ermine-white, fleecy clouds, called cumuli.

Although we were thirty-five miles from the shore, yet large numbers of dragon-flies came round the ship, and I quickly improvised a net and captured a goodly number of them.

After sunset, there was a light air off-shore, which carried us to within a few miles of the land, and at midnight the captain called me on deck to enjoy “the balmy breezes of the Eastern isles;” and certainly to myself, as well as to the others, the air seemed to have the rich fragrance of new-mown clover, but far more spicy. At that hour it was quite clear, but at sunrise a thick haze rose up from the ocean, and this phenomenon was repeated each morning that we were trying to enter the Strait of Sunda. As we had arrived during the changing of the monsoons, calms were so continuous that for six days we tried in vain to gain fifty miles. When a breeze would take us up near the mouth of the channel, it would then die away and let a strong current sweep us away to the east, and one time we were carried most unpleasantly near the high, threatening crags at Palembang Point, near Java Head. Those who have passed Sunda at this time of the year, or Ombay Strait in the beginning of the opposite monsoon, will readily recall the many weary hours they have passed waiting for a favorable breeze to take them only a few miles farther on their long voyage.

During those six days, at noon the sun poured down his hottest rays, the thermometer ranging from 88° to 90° Fahr. in the shade, and not the slightest air moving to afford a momentary relief. Although constantly for a year I was almost under the equator, these six days were the most tedious and oppressive I ever experienced.

The mountain back of Java Head seemed to be King Eolus’s favorite seat. Clouds would come from every quarter of the heavens and gather round its summit, while the sun was reaching the zenith; but soon after he began to pass down the western sky, lightnings would be seen darting their forked tongues around the mountain-crest: and then, as if the winds had broken from the grasp of their king, thick cloud-masses would suddenly roll down the mountain-sides, lightnings dart hither and thither, and again and again the thunders would crash and roar enough to shake the very firmament.

We are not alone. Six or eight vessels are also detained here—for this Strait of Sunda is the great gate through which pass out most of the valuable teas and costly silks of China and Japan, and these ships are carrying cotton goods to those lands to exchange in part for such luxuries. On the evening of the sixth day a more favorable breeze took us slowly up the channel past a group of large rocks, where the unceasing swell of the ocean was breaking, and making them sound in the quiet night like the howling and snarling of some fierce monster set to guard the way and unable to prevent his expected prey from escaping.

With the morning came a fine breeze, and, as we sailed up the strait, several small showers passed over the mountains, parallel to the shore, on the Java side; and once a long cloud rested its ends on two mountains, and unfolded from its dark mass a thin veil of sparkling rain, through which we could see quite distinctly all the outlines and the bright-green foliage of the valley behind it. The highly-cultivated lands near the water, and on the lower declivities of the mountains, whose tops were one dense mass of perennial green, made the whole view most enchanting to me; but our captain (who was a Cape Cod man) declared that the sand-hills on the outer side of Cape Cod were vastly more charming to him. On the shallows, near the shore, the clear sea-water took a beautiful tint of emerald green in the bright sunlight, and here we passed long lines of cuttle-fish bones and parts of mysterious fruits where the tides met, that were setting in different directions.

Nearly all the islands in the strait are steep, volcanic cones, with their bases beneath the sea; the bright-green foliage on their sides forming an agreeable contrast with the blue ocean at their feet when the waves roll away before a strong breeze; but when it is calm, and the water reflects the light, as from a polished mirror, they appear like gigantic emeralds set in a sea of silver.

As we approached Angir, where ships bound to and from China frequently stop for fresh provisions, we saw, to our great alarm, a steamship! Was it the pirate Shenandoah, and was our ship to be taken and burnt there, almost at the end of our long voyage? I must confess that was what we all feared till we came near enough to see the “Stars and Stripes” of the loyal flag of our native land.

Here many Malays paddled off in their canoes to sell us fruit. We watch the approach of the first boat with a peculiar, indescribable interest. It contains two young men, who row. They are dressed in trousers and jackets of calico, with cotton handkerchiefs tied round their heads. This is the usual dress throughout the archipelago, except that, instead of the trousers or over them, is worn the sarong, which is a piece of cotton cloth, two yards long by a yard wide, with the two shorter sides sewn together, so as to make a bag open at the top and bottom. The men draw this on over the body, and gather it on the right hip; the loose part is then twisted, and tucked under the part passing around the body, so as to form a rude knot. There is a man in the stern, sitting with his feet under him, steering the canoe, and at the same time helping it onward with his paddle. He is dressed in a close-fitting red shirt? No! He is not encumbered with any clothing except what Nature has provided for him, save a narrow cloth about his loins, the usual working-costume of the coolies, or poorer classes. He brings several kinds of bananas, green cocoa-nuts, and the “pompelmus,” which is a gigantic orange, from six to eight inches in diameter. He seems perfectly happy, and talks with the most surprising rapidity. From an occasional word that may be half English, we suppose, like traders in the Western world, he is speaking in no moderate manner of the value of what he has to sell.